Students, faculty protest community college cuts

Many object to canceled classes

By AMY ROLPH, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, February 12, 2009

Photo: Grant M. Haller/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Faculty member Laurie Kempen expresses her concern about budget cuts at a Seattle Community Colleges district Board of Trustees meeting Thursday at the North Seattle campus. Part-time instructors are being laid off despite promises cutting classes would save jobs, she said. less

Faculty member Laurie Kempen expresses her concern about budget cuts at a Seattle Community Colleges district Board of Trustees meeting Thursday at the North Seattle campus. Part-time instructors are being laid ... more

Photo: Grant M. Haller/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Students, faculty protest community college cuts

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The cuts are starting to strike nerves in the Seattle Community Colleges district.

That's what the district's Board of Trustees found at their monthly meeting Thursday, when faculty members and students from Seattle Central Community College packed the room to protest the cancellation of several language classes that fell victim to budget slashing earlier this year.

The sudden cuts left some students reeling, scrambling for ways to complete their plans to transfer to four-year programs without credits they were counting on.

"We have committed both our time and our money," student Mindi Jones said. "We feel like we've been misled and betrayed."

Board members and college administrators seemed sympathetic to their complaints. But they didn't waste words when it came to the district's financial situation.

"There will be pain in this community college district," Chairman Thomas Malone said.

In other words, spring-quarter language classes with historically low enrollment are just some of the first things to go.

Community colleges, like the state's public universities, were ordered by Gov. Chris Gregoire late last year to slash budgets. The state's revenue deficit, expected to reach $6 billion, coupled with the governor's promise to abstain from raising taxes means funding for state programs likely will be severely slashed in the coming biennium.

Gregoire asked community colleges in December to prepare for a 6 percent funding reduction. And Thursday, 10 percent was the cut being talked about.

For Seattle Central, that's on top of a $1.2 million reduction for the remainder of this biennium, ending in June.

"We have been faced with a national financial crisis," Seattle Central President Mildred Olee said. "We're faced with a state financial crisis. The governor has given us a mandate."

But the dollars-and-cents justification didn't do a lot to allay the concerns of many who came to fight for foreign language classes at Thursday's meeting. They still wanted to know: Why them?

About 60 people gathered outside the board meeting on the North Seattle Community College campus Thursday afternoon -- talking loudly enough to disrupt a budget study-session happening inside.

And though they were shushed a few times, they weren't quiet for long. After all, their goal was to be heard.

"We got the silent treatment from the Seattle Central Community College administration," said Zach Aichele, a student who wants to transfer to the University of Washington to major in Latin studies.

The Kitsap County resident has a two-hour commute by ferry, car and bus each way to get to school but said he enrolled at Seattle Central because it has the upper-level Spanish courses he needs.

But earlier this week, Aichele found that the last part of the six-quarter series won't be offered this spring. And that could complicate his transfer plans.

"There's money to be spent in the budget," he said Thursday, citing a main-hallway remodeling happening at the Central campus. "They're cutting classes but making the building pretty."

About 40 classes were cut from the spring course catalogue of about 1,000 offerings -- and roughly a quarter were Japanese, Spanish and French classes, vice president of instruction Ronald Hamberg said. The classes omitted had low enrollment typically and weren't necessary for a two-year transfer degree.

Some protested that cutting classes doesn't just hurt students. Seattle Central Faculty Senate President Laurie Kempen said administrators told her the cancellations would save jobs. But many community college instructors are adjuncts -- part-timers who teach one or two courses a quarter.

"Quite a few part-time faculty have ended up laid off entirely," Kempen said.

Hamberg said after the public-comment session that he feels for the students -- that he'd be upset, too, if faced with the same situation.

But he also thinks that cuts are going to become even more painful over the next year or so.